Do you want to go to the seaside?

Saturday: Paris with Camille and Charlotte to see "La Dernière Séance," Marilyn Monroe's last photo shoot, at the Musée Maillot. Except there was a three-hour line, so we went to a café in St. Michèl then took the train home.

Home: Laura and Christian are here! The two adorable cousins from Columbia. We played tag and blind-man's bluff until dinner (cheese fondue); I performed a touching cover of "Gaston y a le Téléphon qui Son" after losing my piece of bread, and Camille an uncannily Piaf-ish "La Vie en Rose."

Sunday: To the sea! Three hours to Deauville (it would have been two, but we took a shortcut). We had lunch at a moule-frites restaurant/crèperie.

Too many crèpes.

Then we walked to the beach where families in Speedos dared to go swimming in October. Everything is so much more photogenic in France: the kids in their rainboots looking for shells, the old women with their dogs and baguettes...

I'm not finished! But the photos won't load, so I'll add more later.

Tayler and Thomas- I love you both! I'll talk to you sometime, but my host father has been sitting at the computer for a week trying to fix the virus, so I might try the mail...

Fashion week

I guess since I'm just outside of Paris,
I should probably post something about fashion.
These are the must-haves this fall:

1. The fluo look

2. Halfway to skinny jeans...

3. The Chapka

4. The beau-gar look, but I guess Félix doesn't have to try.

5. Vert

Oh là là! Regardez les modèles des manteaux!

6. The Gaston the Téléphone song, and dancing to it.

7. And Barbapapa

Versailles

"Et dimanche, s'il fait beau, on va a Versailles."

After breakfast we left for Versailles. When Louis XIV was king, he built Versailles for himself and all of the nobles. That ends up being around 3,000 people. Then there were the workers to take care of the:

800 hectares (2,000 acres) of grounds

20 kilometres (12 miles) of roads

46 kilometres (27 miles) of trellises

200,000 trees

210,000 flowers planted every year

132 kilometres (80 miles) of rows of trees

23 hectares (55 acres): surface area of the Grand Canal

5.57 kilometres (3.3 miles): perimeter of the Grand Canal

20 kilometres (12 miles) of enclosing walls

50 fountains

620 fountain nozzles

35 kilometres (21 miles) of water conduits

3,600 cubic meters per hour: water consumed during Full Play of Fountains

11 hectares (26 acres) of roof

51,210 square meters of floors

2,153 windows

700 rooms

67 staircases

6,000 paintings

1,500 drawings and 15,000 engravings

2,100 sculptures

5,000 items of furniture and objets d'art

150 varieties of apple and peach trees in the Vegetable Garden

and 0 toilets

The 0 toilets actually did require a lot of work, because in place of bathrooms, there were servents whose only task was to carry around buckets.

It's incredible to think that so much history happened in one place, and to imagine the nobles in their gowns or powdered wigs seeing almost exactly the same things.



Camille et Michèle/Maman/Madame Chamigny- je vous aime!





Just before the revolution, Marie Antoinette moved into the palace. Most people think that she was stuck-up or just stupid, but she really did have amazing artistic ideas. She planned all of the gardens that she had created for her: elaborate swimming pools, a rock grotto, two palaces, and, to associate with the common people, a farm. This was my favorite part of Versailles...

La Temple d'Amour

Praying to the god of love.

One of the buildings of Mary Antoinette's farm.




Camille and her date.


The one statue where an animal isn't being killed. At the entrance there's one of a king standing on a peasant's head.